Kickin' it Old School

This is the start up screen for "Pepper II," one of my fave games that I would like to play again soon.

So, I get a call from my brother who came home from Illinois yesterday. The first thing he says is, "Hi Miss, where are the old consoles?" My first instinct, is to obviously ask questions and point out the obvious. You mean my consoles. Where are my consoles? And I think they're by grandpa's bedroom, if not, they're probably packed up in the garage. Why?

He ended up telling me that he was inspired by a set up of one of our cousin's friends. And told me about setting up a whole bunch of old school consoles. And I even managed to ask how his trip was somewhere in there. From there, I saw a barage of old school gaming references and started thinking of some of my faves. Now, these range from Coleco Vision to Nintendo and Genesis, but they're a bunch of good fun now, just as they were back in the day.

I'm not going to start out with Mario, even though he quickly became one of my faves when we picked up a used SNES (Super Nintendo Entertainment System) at Funcoland (a place to get used games, consoles and gaming accessories, as well as trade in your stuff you don't use). And who didn't like watching those dancing trees? But here are some games that I can still talk about with my fam and remember the fun times to this day.

5. ToeJam and Earl. Now I'm not talking about their trip to Funkotron. I'm talking about the first one with Icarus wings, crazy scientists and being awarded the cool titles you received as you start at "Weiner" and pass by "Peanut" to "Funklord." It was a very basic game. All you had to do, as ToeJam and Earl, was find the pieces of your spaceship so you could make it back to your funky home planet. The part that made it hard was the bad earthlings like the hamsters rolling around in their hamster balls and moles popping up out of nowhere taking your presents, sticky cheese (at least I always thought it was cheese) that made it slow to walk (with the combination of a tornado that could carry you over the edge if you weren't careful) and using a suprise gift of rocket shoes when you were close to a ledge. I don't recall ever completing the game, but I do remember the tons of laughter it brought to me and my family.

4. Clay Fighters This was one of the most ridiculous fighting games I've ever seen. It was a bunch of crazy characters including Blue Suede Goo (Eh, thank you very much), Taffy and Bad Mr. Frosty (I'm bad, I'm cool, I know I'm cool). This game took everything "scary" and "violent" about fighting games and turned it into a silly mess. When I think of winter, I still think of Bad Mr. Frosty. That dude will always be cool.

3. Altered Beast I think more than the storyline and goal of the game, the atmosphere and the actions of the characters are what is engrained in my head from my childhood. This crazy-awesome theme music would come on, that pumped up the player for the battles ahead. Then you were in the game, trying to "Pow-er up," so you could fight the bad guys at the end of the level. You needed to catch three blue globes to power up to change into your beast form - werewolf, weredragon, werebear and weretiger - to take on the boss (which was usually just a button-mashing session). But to this day, the bear form still looks like it turns the ants into chocolate and the kicks and knock backs are the most ridiculous fighting animations ever. But one thing still troubles me, what's with the creepy dude wearing a purple toga? I probably should have paid a little more attention to the story instead of giggling everytime the game paused with a deep male's voice saying "Pow-er Up!"

2. Zombies Ate My Neighbors Wow. What can I say about this game? So much fun. So many psychotic baddies. So many goofy humans to save. So many ridiculous weapons. And SO many levels! And although this game is fun by yourself, playing in a group is so much more fun. The game can play up to two people in a co-op storyline, but many times my siblings and cousins got together to play through as many levels as we could. We may have beat it once. But it definitely took up major hours to do that.

1. Pepper III know a lot of people are going to read that and say, "Whhaaaa?!" It's a game for Coleco Vision, and one of my favorites at that. It was similar to Pacman in that the baddies were chasing you and you had a very small area to go, so if a baddy got in your way, you had to back up, there was no going around them and living to tell the tale. And the goal was to trace all the varying shapes, changing the insides into a different design. It was a major problem-solving type of puzzle game. And I always thought it was so beautiful, bringing the artistic and gaming side of me into a single game.

What are some favorite games you played as a kid, digital or otherwise? Any you continue to play or any new ones that you really love?

Happy gaming, reading, watching or whatever you do for fun. Talk to you next week about something else that's entertaining.